Clay Bennett, 58, retired Rocky Mountain park ranger, leans against a splintered pine post at the Savannah VFW fish fry, sweat beading at the edge of his beat-up Stetson. He’d only agreed to come because his old army buddy Mike badgered him for three weeks straight, said moping in his drafty bungalow with a case of PBR and reruns of *The Rifleman* wasn’t a valid retirement plan. Clay’s left knuckle bears a thin, pale scar from a 2019 black bear encounter, his flannel sleeves rolled to the elbows to show off a faded pine tree tattoo inked in 1990, the year his son was born. He’s lived next door to Jodi Marlow for three months, and he’s spoken a grand total of four words to her: a mumbled “mornin’” when he backed his rusted F-150 out of the driveway once, and a gruff “thanks” when she left a jar of homemade pickles on his porch last month.
He’s avoided her on purpose. He watched three of her line dancing TikTok clips by accident last Saturday, drunk after his weekly Zoom call with his former ranger crew, and felt like a pervert the second he closed the app. 52, divorced, her son a firefighter in Seattle, she posts clips of herself at the local honky tonk three times a week, hips swaying to old Tracy Byrd tracks, grinning like she hasn’t got a care in the world. Clay told himself it was disrespectful to even look at her, that dating at his age was for guys who couldn’t stand to be alone, that his wife of 34 years would roll her eyes so hard she’d strain something if she saw him gawking at the neighbor.
The line for peach cobbler moves slow, and when he reaches the front, he freezes. Jodi’s behind the table, hair pulled back in a frayed scrunchie, a few strands stuck to her sweat-slick forehead, her cutoff flannel sleeve riding up to show an identical pine tree tattoo on her forearm. She looks up, holds eye contact for three full beats longer than polite, and grins. “Fancy seeing you here, ranger. I noticed your patch on your jacket last week.”
He mumbles a greeting, fumbles in his jeans pocket for a five dollar bill, and when he hands it to her, their fingers brush. Hers are ice cold from digging in the cooler for soda pops all night, his are slick with humidity, and he drops the bill on the table. She leans over to grab it, her shoulder brushing his, and he smells coconut shampoo and faint menthol cigarette smoke, the same kind his little sister used to sneak in high school. “Relax,” she says, passing him a heaping plate of cobbler, “I don’t bite. Unless you ask nice.”
He takes the plate and hightails it to a picnic table on the edge of the tent, planning to eat fast and bolt before he makes an even bigger fool of himself. Five minutes later, she slides into the bench across from him, holding two frosty root beer bottles, and sets one down in front of him. Their knees bump under the table. He tenses, but doesn’t move his leg. She doesn’t move hers either.
She says she got her pine tree tattoo after a summer working concessions in Yellowstone when she was 22, that she’d recognized his when he was cutting down a dead oak in his yard two weeks prior. He nods, says he got his after his first full year patrolling the Rockies. She brings up the 2003 Denver youth soccer tournament, says she’d remembered him the second she saw him move in, that he’d carried her 12-year-old son to the first aid tent when he broke his ankle sliding into second base, that he was the only dad there who didn’t panic. He blinks, he’d forgotten that entirely, says the kid was tough, didn’t even shed a tear. She laughs, low and warm, says that kid still sends her dumb firefighter memes every single day.
He admits he avoided her on purpose, that his wife died of pancreatic cancer 18 months prior, that he’d told himself even looking at another woman was a betrayal. She taps her bare ring finger, nods, says she waited four years after her husband left her for a 28-year-old paralegal before she even agreed to a coffee date, that she’d felt like she was cheating on the life they were supposed to have, even when he was the one who walked out. “No pressure,” she says, nudging his root beer bottle with hers. “We can just make fun of the guy in the neon cowboy hat who’s dancing like he’s got ants in his pants.”
He laughs, a real, unforced laugh, the first one he’s had that didn’t involve his 4-year-old grandson in six months. They finish the cobbler, and the band switches to a slow cover of Amarillo by Morning, the steel guitar wailing soft over the hum of the crowd. She wipes a smudge of peach filling off his chin with her thumb, her skin soft even with the faint calluses from planting tomatoes in her garden every weekend.
She stands up, holds out her hand, palm up. He stares at it for three seconds, thinks of his wife, who always told him he was too stubborn for his own good, that if something ever happened to her he better not mope around the house like a lost dog for the rest of his life. He takes her hand, her palm fitting perfectly against his, worn callouses matching his own from decades of messy, good, hard work. She leads him toward the dance floor, the string lights above them glowing warm gold, the hum of the crowd wrapping around them like a well-worn flannel. He doesn’t let go of her hand when they stop in the middle of the floor, pulls her a little closer, his Stetson tipping down just enough that only she can see the small, unselfconscious smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
